Sleep Training

When Karis was about five weeks old, she "woke up."  She no longer slept the day away.  It was a struggle to get her to nap.  Once she finally fell asleep, she didn't sleep long.  This stressed me out since I would soon be going back to work.  Others would have to take care of her and I knew how frustrating and tiring it was to try all day long to get her to sleep.  I didn't want anyone to be frustrated with my baby!

Not long after, Karis finally took to the pacifier.  It was wonderful!  Pop it in her mouth and her eyelids got heavy.  She was soon off to dreamland and she would sleep at least 45 minutes.  The only thing was that if the pacifier fell out, we would have to go and put it back in her mouth.  I didn't think it was a problem because she only did it during her naps and not at night. 

Well, fast forward about 15 weeks and she started to wake up several times a night needing her pacifier.  I decided it was time to wean her off the pacifier so she could learn to fall back to sleep on her own and we would both get better sleep.

I hesitated and put off and dreaded this sleep training b/c several weeks prior, I didn't give her the pacifier when she cried at night.  She cried the most awful cry.  She screamed and then she started to sweat and gag... It was awful and I couldn't bear it for more than a couple minutes.  I thought we were going to have to hear hours of that kind of crying all night long!  Surprisingly, it was nothing like that.  The first night she just whimpered for a couple minutes and then fell back to sleep.  She did this about 3 or 4 times in an hour or so and then she was done.  She hasn't woken up since needing a pacifier (waking up to feed is a different story!).  

Naptimes were a bit more challenging.  It took her about 40-45 minutes to fall asleep for a nap the first day without a pacifier.  Again, thankfully it wasn't the bloody-murder cry she cried.  The next day took about 20-25 minutes for her to fall asleep and by the third day we were down to 5-10 minutes.  

So all should be great and our baby should be getting plenty of great sleep night and day.  Nope!  During this "sleep training" process, Karis has mastered the art of rolling on her back.  When she is fighting to fall asleep, she'll roll on her back and play with her newfound toy -- her feet.  She isn't able to fall asleep like that so we have to turn her over onto her stomach (so now we've gone from going in to give her the pacifier to going in to flip her over).  The other night she flipped on her back. I found her in the wee hours on her back, eyes wide open and a foot in each hand.   She also wakes up too early in the morning and instead of falling back to sleep, she'll roll over and hang out with her feet.

So, we've kicked the pacifier habit but now we have the foot fettish issue.  I can't wait until she can roll back over by herself (but that typically doesn't happen for another month or two) and maybe then we'll have a baby that sleeps well!  But, I've been a mom long enough to know that something else is bound to come up by then!

- Lena